Ideas and Resources for Teaching Spanish and MFL from a Spanish Teacher using Mary Glasgow Magazines in her Classroom.

Removal of NC levels – change in education: For worse or better?

By Sue

Come this September all NC levels at KS3 will go. Schools will be responsible for their own grading and thousands of KS3 students, who previously understood just what a level 5 or 6 looked like, will, like their teachers, become well and truly confused.

GCSE grades are going to change and apparently it is going to be harder to achieve the highest grade.

Invariably in some secondary schools students arrive with little or no foreign language skills. Many primaries have no specialist foreign language teachers and yet they are going to be required to teach students whatever foreign language their head requires.

As I am writing this blog, we haven’t decided in my school what levels to follow and we have a Curriculum Leaders meeting this coming week to discuss and analyse what we, as an academy, would like to see.

I already have my opinions. I saw nothing wrong with levels 3, 4, 5 etc. I saw nothing wrong with A*, A, B etc. Don’t get me wrong; I love change, I tweak and play around with my Schemes of Work every year so that I don’t get stale or bored. But, if there are elements on my SoW that were good and that both I and the students loved to do, then it will stay there in its original shape and form ready for the next year.

What I don’t like is change for change sake. I personally believe that too much change without careful thought and planning is just asking for trouble, remember the old saying, “there’ll be tears before bedtime”

These are of course my own personal opinions and do not reflect those of my academy but when I read the various tweets and blogs as I do frequently, many teachers are also of the same opinion as me.

What do you think? What new levels are you going to employ to show achievement and attainment in students’ work?